I'm really loving all these suggestions to expand on traps. Hope the devs get inspired by some of these ideas.
Gonna go on a limb here and suggest how I'd love to see traps permanently hold a counselor who stepped on them until:
A. Either he or she uses a pocket knife to get out of it thru some mini game like repairing a fuse box, etc....
B. Or until a fellow counselor arrives to get you out of it (no knife required) but also thru a mini game where both counselors have to play the same game at the same time and complete it without errors.
This would make traps panic inducing cuz if you're alone with no knife, you're fvkt. And if another counselor comes to save you, you're both at risk. Imagine the anxiety knowing that Jason has been alerted and you're stuck in there until someone rescues you. Jason could keep you there as bait if he wanted to. He could troll the trolls right back. Sweet revenge lol

That's an excellent idea. I've never seen the ROI of using a pocket knife to disarm a trap. I'd rather use it as life insurance. But a +50XP similar to what we get when calling the cops or Tommy might entice me as long as Jason is still wimpy.

I think as much as we still 'might' have some sort of hope that they'll fix things up, they've burned us so much already that we're cynically dismissing any positive possibilities to avoid being utterly disappointed much further.

You're probably right. After all...This was happening even before the nerf patch as shown in that Pappus video you linked to:
Yes they made Jason drop to his knees and rammed him with the car LOL. But this type of match was rare and you had to be really good to pull it off because a competent Jason would force grab you or combat stance block/counter the abusive attacks.
I will admit the nerfing of Jason gave me the courage and confidence to try certain strategies I had seen in videos but was too chicken shit to even try. Granted there's much less of a risk trying such strategies now but they were probably always there from the jump.
As you mentioned, a few tweaks in mechanics won't fix Jason's true weaknesses and exploits. A lot of attention to the combat system must be employed and reworked efficiently for this game to truly feel balanced while maintaining a respectable but fair OP advantage in Jason's favor in order to live up to the films and delivering that level of fear/anxiety as a counselor we all once felt.

Well I guess like many have already done so... I'm taking a leave of absence from this game. Sigh.
I just got off of another ridiculous match as Jason where not only did my morphs/shifts randomly stop working, but once again, I missed grabbing the trolls over 30 times and struck out swinging due to that horrible melee hit detection. I was slaughtered by children, tea bagged, and harassed over the mic. They called the cops but instead of escaping, they decided to circle jerk me right in front of the police for a whole 5 or 6 minutes and troll me. They had ample time to escape, but nope, no one does that anymore. They chased ME inside a house when they noticed I stopped engaging them.
It's a good thing I had already killed the girl with the sweater or I might have been truly embarrassed. I ended up morphing to the other side of the map and just waited out the last 5 minutes of the game. None of them escaped despite being directly in front of the exit. They kept talking trash and let the time expire. 3/8 final score.
This game has become toxic, not enjoyable and simply unacceptable to me as a die hard fan who was playing since Day 1. I've realized that my better days now as Jason since the nerf patch has been mostly against noobs or really bad counselors. I might get 5 or 6 kills if a team plays by the original purpose of the game which was to work co-op and escape while avoiding Jason. But if a semi decent team decides to ignore fixing the car or boat and instead prepares the entire match to fully equip themselves with pocket knives, health sprays, high melee weapons, 2 shotguns, etc...Jason is finished. And if they're playing as high stamina/speed characters, the torture can last for the entire match.
This game is broken and balance has been swayed completely to the counselors in the most unfairest of ways. This is worse than the glitch abusers during the early days of launch, because glitches are unreliable and do not always work. But right now, most people have figured out that Jason is a wimp and there's no threat to come near him for not only will he miss you 80% of the time but if you're grabbed, the circle jerk gang will just pound him in the back with stick. What a disservice these developers have done not only to their loyal fans and backers but to the franchise and the Voorhees name.
It's been nice meeting all of you and I will probably continue posting/commenting here since it's fun and I seem to enjoy reading everyone's points of views more than actually playing this broken game. As a fan of the franchise I will always be curious to see if they patch things up again in the future and balance Jason out as he is supposed to be and once was. I'm still curious as to the Paranoia game mode and other goodies. but right now, playing this game, especially as Jason, is not fun and has tarnished my view of who I once considered one of the most ruthless slasher villains of all time.

Congrats on your 666th post
Btw, please tell me what type of retro servers are you playing in cuz that certainly does NOT look like games look today. This video had them original grabs where counselors knew better than to hover around Jason kinda like we instinctively know getting too close to a barking dog with rabies is begging for trouble.
If team killing still existed, I'd probably be more scared to be around a counselor with a shotgun than standing inches away from the new nerfed Jason.

First time this happened to me I thought.. "Ok fvkers, I'm gonna combat stance your circle jerk and slash you all to death faster than you could find a stable quick match lobby."
But nope. They apparently nerfed the combat stance too cuz now when I block an attack with Jason, he cannot counter for a few seconds. Precious seconds that allow the counselors to retreat and come back for another attack.

Yes, exactly my experience as well. I feel really anxious when playing Jason now cuz of the possibility of being killed or being trolled by people who use their mics and spit their venom. I average about 5/7 now since the nerf patch, with only a couple of matches where I left no survivors and I gotta say it's been the most frustrating experience ever and most annoying as I gotta listen to the trolls talk trash as they circle jerk stun me. In the end, I still get the kills but I don't think they care because the point of the game now apparently is to chase Jason and beat him to a pulp. I miss the days when players were scared the minute they saw Jason and ran as fast and far away as possible. It's baffling how counselors now run TOWARDS Jason.

How do you guys feel about the progress and direction that Friday the 13th has taken since it first released late May of this year?
Before you answer that, lemme tell you a little story about 2 other indie games, most of us are very familiar with, where I invested a lot of playing time since it's birth.
COUNTERSTRIKE:
A long time ago when multiplayer games were limited to PC gamers, there was a game called, Half-Life, which not only revolutionized FPS games but also inspired many MODs to the game. After exhausting death-match and that other popular mod, Team Fortress Classic, I was introduced to a new MOD called Counterstrike. It was quietly developed by 2 fellows in 1999 and while it graphically looked primitive and was super glitchy, there was something about it that kept my friends and I engaged. It only had 1 map I think called Mansion where the good guys would have to infiltrate a mansion that was taken over by the bad guys, with the goal of rescuing hostages. I remember the first person angle of the gun was Lefty instead of the traditional Righty which for some reason had ppl upset even back then LOL.
It quickly drew popularity and Valve, the company responsible for Half-Life, hired the 2 guys and started releasing updates and patches for it. With every patch the game started looking better, glitches were fixed, new maps added, new weapons, game mechanics improved, but the balance was always maintained. A new patch didn't suddenly favor a side with a promise that it would re-balance it in a future possible patch.
The game inspired a hardcore audience where competitions and gambling took place, especially amongst Russian players. It was never watered down or handi-capped. From my experience, it always felt it got better and the game mechanics tighter. First time we had smoke grenades was amazing. When the bomb was introduced as another way to win as a terrorist, I remember being blown away (no pun intended) I could go on but you catch my drift and I'm not even gonna get into CS:GO cuz well, I didn't play it much. Just talking about the original Counterstrike and Counterstrike Source.
MINECRAFT:
I remember the time my friend told me about this game you could purchase online for really cheap that 1 indie developer was working on his own. He told me it captured the magic of 8 bit gaming from back in the day where graphics were primitive but we were so immersed by the game that our mind would fill in the blanks. I couldn't fathom how a first person blocky 3D game with blocky enemies and blocky textures could draw anyone into it .. until I played it.
It didn't take long for me to be immersed in this blocky world where watching the sun go down and not having a safe place to hide would give me such anxiety. I would scream when a blocky skeleton would somehow shoot an arrow at me from a platform below. That moment when a blocky Creeper would somehow find its way inside my blocky fortress made of dirt and explode in my face, killing me instantly, would give me a heart attack. This reminded me of the anxiety and panic I would feel playing the NES Friday the 13th back in the 80s. That purple Jason popping up in the cabins or outside slinging Machetes at me was intense, especially since 80% of the counselors were slow af.
Back to Minecraft, I had no idea how much health I had cuz we had no life meter in it's early build, I had no idea where i was cuz there was no map. I had to create towers of blocks, unique enough to mark my progress so that I would remember where my little fortress was in the event I died and wanted to go back to it. Ahh that feeling of sunrise and hearing the monsters dying sounded like paradise to me.
I think I paid like $13 for the game where it went straight into the developers pocket, long before the game had any hope of being released on a console nor gaining the popularity it has now.
~~~~~
I mention Minecraft because, much like Counterstrike, it started as an indie project and slowly grew into a household name. However, while Counterstrike maintained a reputation as a hardcore game where you couldn't just run and gun it like other shooters and never relented in it's difficult learning curve, Minecraft shifted it's focus to the kids and marketed it's characters much like Nintendo markets Mario and Luigi. That's all nice and dandy since Minecraft was never confirmed to be a 'hardcore' title but nonetheless, I do not enjoy Minecraft like I did when it was in it's early builds because it's not the same game anymore, it has changed so much of what it once that it just doesn't capture that feeling of isolation, fear/anxiety that I used to get. Seeing stuffed animals of the Creepers at Hot Topic has desensitized me of their level of threat much like watching Jason being circle jerk trolled in almost every match now has diminished that fear I had just watching him approaching me from the woods.
Friday the 13th started out very glitchy, and still is, but it delivered an experience and an atmosphere similar to what both Counterstrike and Minecraft did respectfully.
However, the path it is taking now from my point of view is that it is leaning more towards the kids and casual players like Minecraft did, rather than maintaining it's hardcore level of difficulty like Counterstrike maintained over the years.
While Minecraft since the beginning was a blocky, simple little game with bright colors, cute little blocky piggies and such, it's understandable that they would market it the way they have and catered towards the audience that it has catered to. I wish it was more like it's early day but I can see why it happened.
Friday the 13th on the other hand was NEVER marketed in it's Kickstarter nor in it's initial release as a parody of the films/franchise. It was marketed as a hardcore F13 simulation where you play as the killer or die trying to escape from him. Party dancing packs, silly costumes, etc have watered it down and taken away from it's hardcore scary atmosphere and the nerfs Jason has endured have drastically changed the gameplay. Adapting to what it is now is a humble attitude to have and I'm doing my best to maintain that but suffice to say, it is not the game it once was.

I hear ya. That's a good mindset to have especially in real life outside of gaming. To each it's own. I've also adapted to the changes and though I'm not at my peak Jason performance yet (I've swept a couple of matches but still averaging about 5/7 I would say), I'm not scrubbing like I was a week ago.
However I'm not one to bow my head and accept every circumstance and situation and I think the majority of the hardcore fans feel we've been shown a disservice, especially the backers of the game. We were promised something and it was delivered, although buggy and glitchy, but it delivered as promised and now the game has been completely altered and the main character of the game has been reduced to less than what he originally was. Less than what his reputation in the films have maintained over the years.
We have a choice to accept it and adapt or walk away. This is true. But I feel many of us still have hope that our voices will be heard. A few tweaks in favor of Jason in a future patch can bring the correct balance to the game where we once again fear playing as a counselor and feel like a powerhouse when playing as Jason.

Hmm...Not sure if you're with me or against me Wait a minute, you're Pro Nerf aren't you? Lol I see what you did there sir...tryn'imply that I face the opposite direction when trying to grab a counselor now aren't we? Yes I said tryn'imply.
I like the idea of day maps a lot since most of the earlier films took place during day as well as at night. There was something ambiently creepy af about being alone in camp crystal lake during the day, especially with that excellent score. The reboot film did a great job of capturing that feeling almost as good as the earlier films.
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre took place mostly during the day and it was disturbing af. I think running around crystal lake during the day while being chased by the human Jasons would feel pretty canon to the films. I'd very much like to see that and not even a new map, same maps just with day time weather effects.